PLANTING THAT HAS A DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE THAN COLOR OR FORM—THE EXTRA PLEASURE OF 
A GARDEN OF PERSONALITY WHERE EACH PLANT HAS A HISTORIC OR COMMEMORATIVE VALUE 
by Charles Francis Saunders 
Author of “Under the Sky in California,” Etc. 
Photographs by the Author 
M Y friend Jenkins, whom 1 used to know in Philadelphia as 
the proprietor of a small brokerage business, moved to 
California a few years ago, and I met him recently on the street 
in Los Angeles. He had 
been a nervous.hurried, 
anaemic sort of man 
back East, but now he 
had the leisurely, easy¬ 
going manner of the 
Californian,and wore a 
smile and a coat of tan. 
“Come out and see 
us,” he said; “I’m done 
with shearing lambs 
and am living the Ar¬ 
cadian life in a bunga¬ 
low, with a bit of gar¬ 
den that my friends are 
good enough to tell me 
is sufficiently out of the 
ordinary to be interest¬ 
ing to them.” 
So one day I took an 
electric car to the ad¬ 
dress lie gave me in one 
of the pleasant little 
foothill towns that 
cluster about the South¬ 
ern California metrop¬ 
olis, and soon we were 
strolling together about 
his garden. 
The classic* acanthus, whose leaves suggested the 
Cortntki&E Cepi’tal 
“I call it mv garden of associations,” he explained. “It seems 
to me that a garden has a mission beyond just being pretty to look 
at — the plants in it, or, at least, a good many of them, should stand 
for something — have a 
history. By that I 
mean either that the in¬ 
dividual plant should 
have some story to tell, 
possess some associa¬ 
tion that gives it more 
than ordinary interest; 
or that it should be of 
a race that has had a 
part in the world’s his¬ 
tory. That little tree 
by the sidewalk, with 
the leathery pinnate 
leaves, is a case in 
point. It is a carob 
tree. You remember 
the brown, flat pods 
called St. John's bread, 
which we used to see 
on fruiterers’stalls back 
East in our boyhood 
days, along with figs 
and dates and oranges? 
This is the tree that 
bears them. It is in¬ 
digenous to Syria and 
Egypt, but feels quite The foliage of hemp is one of the most beautiful 
at borne in California. in the world 
(102) 
